Decentralized Blockchain Lottery vs Traditional Lottery

Even though the world has changed immensely for the past 30 years, lottery stayed the most popular social game in the world. In first world countries, over half the population plays lottery games. In some places, the number goes over 75%. However, many people are put off by some problems the traditional lottery causes.

Advantages of Traditional Lottery

The biggest advantage of the traditional lottery is its simplicity. Not in the way it operates in regards to the payouts, but the way people can buy tickets and check out the results. For example, everyone knows how to find out the latest US Mega Millions Results. Meanwhile, it will take some time to learn how to deal with another lottery scheme, such as blockchain.

Playing lottery is a tradition for many people. They enjoy going to lotto outlets, buying tickets, and then waiting for days, hoping to see the right results. While it may seem inconvenient to the younger generation, the older players (who are usually wealthy enough to buy many tickets) often enjoy the process more than the results.

Disadvantages of Traditional Lottery

The first and foremost question is the trust. An average player of an average lottery never knows the prize formation scheme until he or she actually gets the prize. The most important person in the traditional lottery world is the organizer, who is human. Organizers don’t just make accidental blunders, they may deliberately act dishonestly.

The second problem with the traditional lottery is the time it takes to be paid. Sometimes people wait for months to get their money. Besides, in most countries, you need to pay huge taxes in order to claim your prize. At the same time, the traditional lottery has geographic limitations. Meaning, in most cases, you can only play the lottery in your own country, otherwise, the payout scheme may be complicated or not possible at all.

Another problem with the traditional lottery is unclaimed winnings. About $800 million of prizes are unclaimed each year in the USA. Lost tickets, forgotten numbers, illnesses, lack of attention, and many more reasons result in unclaimed money. Eventually, some prize pools are boosted by this money while the organizers’ pockets get fuller.

Advantages of Decentralized Blockchain Lottery

The main advantage of the decentralized blockchain lottery is the transparency. In the traditional lottery, money changes hands many times. It comes from the player’s pocket, goes to the organizers, who come up with prizes, keep their share, and then send the money to the winners. These transactions are hidden from the public eye. However, decentralized blockchain lottery puts them out in the open. It eliminates the “trust” factor from the equation.

The history of every coin a user invests in the lottery can be accessible at any time of the day and from any country, the fairness of the game becomes obvious. The human factor is out so there isn’t any room for fraud.

All the blockchain lottery transactions are copied so all the participants have access to other people’s actions. As a result, all the lottery players can make sure that the prizes are awarded according to the rules.

Blockchain lottery providers are also transparent about the percentage of money that goes to the prize pool. People don’t have to wonder how many of their coins end up in the organizers’ pockets. There is never any third party involved.

Blockchain lottery is also highly accessible. Anyone, who wants to play and win, can participate. This means there is no geographic limitation.

Disadvantages of Decentralized Blockchain Lottery

There aren’t many disadvantages to blockchain lottery. In fact, people have been looking for a way to add transparency to the traditional lottery for years. However, not everyone is ready to take advantage of these innovations just yet. Many people don’t know what cryptocurrency is, let alone how to use it to play a lottery.

Imagine grandpas and grandmas setting up crypto wallets and downloading apps to their smartphones. Such lottery will ruin the tradition of watching the TV to see the results and getting a huge paycheck in the end.

Blockchain lotteries’ reward currency varies from BTC to ETH, etc. Meaning, in order to take advantage of it, you need to purchase cryptocurrency. No matter how many innovative platforms you’ll find to do this, you are bound to incur fees and struggle with waiting time.

Decentralized blockchain lotteries are still very young. With time, they are bound to conquer the world. All the disadvantages of this lottery type are superficial. In a year or so, most people will realize that minor setbacks are a small price to pay for transparency.